How I Met Your Mother "Bad Crazy" Review

Lily tells Ted that he needs to date Jeanette for a significant amount of time. They're both insane and need each other. Ted needs to share his insanity with another person, Lily explains. I would've preferred Carter Bays and Craig Thomas walking into frame, telling Josh Radnor and Alyson Hanigan to freeze for just a moment while they break the fourth wall to tell the audience they're intention to waste time with the Jeanette character because they're hung up on the introduction of the mother in the series finale. Jeanette represents The Last One. Every person has a last one, I suppose, unless one marries the first person one dates, in which case I'm making a generalization and apologize. Ted will have a moment when he realizes it's time to stop dating. It'll involve fire, and the remnants of his upstairs scattered on a New York street. Since the show's renewed for another season, I assume the relationship will take a full calendar year to get to the fiery ending.

"Bad Crazy" tries to trick the viewer into thinking the fiery ending will be the conclusion. No, Bays and Thomas adore pulling the rug out from under the audience, followed by pulling the rug that was underneath the other rug that had been pulled out, and then there's a third, and even a fourth, rug that's pulled out from the viewer. The narrative is unfair to Jeanette until Mike Tyson defends crazy women. Bays and Thomas use Tyson's reputation for the sake of ultimate irony. Mike Tyson's the former world heavyweight champion who bit off Holyfield's ear, raped a woman, went to jail. ESPN's Bill Simmons created the Tyson Scale to measure an athlete's craziness. Tyson's reformed his life. He's become an example of the value of second chances in America. He was a bad, bad man who's tried real hard to become a good, good man. The gist of the joke or whatever you want to call it is Tyson should be the last one explaining 'crazy' to someone else. Tyson, as it were, wrote the book on crazy.

Ted tells the gang he broke up with Jeanette. She got too crazy for him, and it was best for the relationship to end. Jeanette shows up to the apartment while Ted's out of the house, looking for a book she left. Ted stressed Marshall and Barney, who were hanging out and playing video games, to not let her in the apartment should she stop by. She stops by; she enters the house; she destroys valuable items in his place. But why? SHE'S CRAZY! No, that's not entirely it. Remember Bays and Thomas' addiction to pulling rugs out from under the audience's feet. Ted's not truthful to his friends about the situation. I won't bother picking apart the actions of a thirty-something fictional character who hangs out with the same four people all the time. It doesn't make a lick of sense for him to withhold the truth from them; however, his friends can be terrible about his relationship fallouts. I wouldn't tell these folks a gosh darn thing about my personal life.

Ted never broke up with Jeanette. The story's so damn stupid. I'm embarrassed to even recap it and then comment on it. Ted and Jeanette went to a sports game at the Barclays Center. Jeanette thought Ted wanted to admit his feelings for Lily (Jeanette created a different Lily in her mind--a Lily with a southern drawl) to which Ted passionately kissed her. I don't know. The scene changes as Ted reveals the truth about what happened. Mike Tyson won't let Ted off the hook. Jeanette isn't the crazy girl just because she's crazy. Barney's theory that girls just are crazy is disputed by the former world heavyweight champion of the world. Men must accept responsibility for their role in a woman's behavior. Men send mix signals that make women feel crazy. They lash out. It's all a mess. Ted accepts his role in Jeanette's behavior. It's sort of hard to ignore how she's destroying his lamps as well as his other personal items. It's a sitcom, though--his stuff will be as good as new next week. Ted listens to Lily's advice about dating her. He needs it. His grand romantic arc needs it because he needs to that nonsense romantic element where he realizes he can't date anymore. Dating's just too much for ol' Ted Mosby. Whatever. Abby Elliott is a welcomed addition to the show for however long she's around for. She's funny, pretty, sexy, and hopefully the writers let her do more than be stereotypically crazy.

Meanwhile, the less I write about the Robin/baby Marvin plot is for the better. I contemplated embedding a clip of Daniel Bryan yelling 'NO!' rather than write anything about the B story. Robin doesn't want to hold Marvin. She's forced into doing it but refuses. Mike Tyson is involved and a strip club. The story's told in flash-forwards. Time passes. Robin reveals a new truth about that day she needed to hold Marvin with each passing year. It's a mind-numbing device. I was yelling "NO!" each time the title card showed the passage of years. Robin finally holds the baby and likes it. The story is a massive waste of time; it ends in a predictable place. The future if anything depicts a strained friendship. The women seem to meet but once each year. Their conversation is wooden and soulless.

In truth, I didn't mind the A story which involved Josh Radnor in a Boba Fett suit (If I'm wrong about that, I don't care) and the return of his red boots as worn by a quite provocative Abby Elliott. The B story was horrible. It really brought the episode down.

Other Thoughts:

-Ted's apartment is used as a clubhouse. Marshall and Barney store all of the items their ladies won't let them store in their living space. The items include a canoe, cotton candy machine, and pac-man arcade game.

-Robin's personal arc is going to end with her a mother in May 2014.

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